Sunday, August 2, 2009

Just Another Day in Paradise

I woke up early and headed to Huntsville State Park for another hilly long run. I experienced a first in that the park gates were locked when I arrived around 6:30. I had to mix my sport drink so just pulled into the lot near the gate and by the time I had my last FuelBelt bottle filled a park ranger had opened the gates.

Last week I saw a couple of deer for the first time in the park; today I saw 3 that were all together. They spotted me and watched for a second to see where I was headed before they took off.

The mileage plan today was a repeat of last week.... close to 11 by adding loops in near the end of the run. It was pretty humid out there... at least by the amount of sweat that I was producing it seemed to be. My HR stayed pretty low for me and I felt good early on so I pushed a little harder than I had in the past. When I got to the loop turnoff, I passed on the extra mileage and finished just a little over 9 miles. I think I'll try to get 13 or so in next weekend and then run the weekend before the race in flatter land near the house. There you have it.... training on the fly.

I haven't seen anything printed yet about the Houston marathon and half but am still confused about the seperate caps that were placed on the races this year along with the ability to transfer into a sold out event. Why place seperate caps if you're going to allow transfers even after one of the caps has been met. It makes it look like its all about the money. In this case, 1/2'ers paying the full marathon fee plus a $10 transfer fee. Amazingly, that is still cheaper than the Disney 1/2 fee. Anyways, if there are more 1/2 than full participants, maybe there should be a change to the 1/2 course to make it more scenic. I think removing the viaduct and adding Memorial Park would be a welcome change. Just an innocent bystander here as I'm not running Houston this year but those thoughts dominated my run this morning.

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